Which countries have the best reputations? What does that even mean? The Reputation Institute, a global private consulting firm based in New York and Copenhagen, has just released its fifth annual “Country RepTrak” of what it calls “The World’s Most Reputable Countries,” a tool the firm uses to help it advise countries on how to bolster their reputations around the globe. It also advises companies who want to know how their country of origin influences their reputations elsewhere.

This year it made some changes to the list. Instead of rating the 50 countries that either have the largest economies and populations or are in the public eye as a result of economic, political or natural events, it decided to do a less subjective ranking of the 55 countries with the largest GDP. That meant it left off countries with low GDPs like Haiti and Iraq and added bigger economies like Kuwait and Romania.

Topping the list this year: Switzerland, which edged out Canada, the No. 1 country for the previous three years. Sweden comes in third, down from second last year. Finland is the biggest gainer in the top 10, moving up to fourth place, from eighth last year. The US is down at 22, behind Brazil and just above the Czech Republic (more on the US below).

To compile its data, the Reputation Institute ran online surveys with 27,000 consumers in the G8 countries from January through March of this year. Then to flesh out the data further, for the first time it interviewed 30,000 additional people in the 12 non-G8 countries with the biggest economies, including China, India and Brazil.

To compile its rankings, it asked three broad, general questions about the countries’ overall reputation: Did the respondents have a “good feeling” about the countries, did they admire or respect the countries, did they trust the countries and did they think the countries had a “good overall reputation.” The rankings are based on those questions alone.

Then to get more insight into why respondents answered the way they did, Reputation Institute asked about 17 different attributes, including physical beauty, whether the country offers an array of appealing experiences like food, sports and entertainment and whether the country produces high-quality products and services. New this year: It asked about which countries had “high transparency and low corruption.” Sweden ranked at the top of that list and, not surprisingly Iran at the bottom, with Pakistan, Russia and Nigeria not far behind. The U.S. didn’t do too well on that ranking, coming in at No. 23, just behind Poland and above Taiwan.

Finally it asked seven more questions, to get yet more information on what drove the broad rankings: would you buy products from the country, would you invest there, visit there, live or work there, study or organize an event there. “We ask all these questions so we can understand how they influence the positive emotional bonding with the country,” says Fernando Prado, the Reputation Institute’s managing partner for Iberia & Latin America

Prado’s insights are intriguing. When I asked him why Finland gained this year, he cited the following: The country just doesn’t project much bad news. Instead it chalks up positives like a ranking by Save the Children on the best countries to be a mother, where it took the No. 1 spot in May 2013. Last Oct., the World Economic Forum published a gender gap ranking that measured how the genders fared on economic, political, education and health-based criteria. Finland scored No. 2, behind Iceland. The Finnish education system has been cited as a model. It also puts out some beloved products like the smartphone game Angry Birds by Rovio, a Finish company, and there are two winning Formula 1 drivers, Heikki Kovalainen and Kimi Raikkonen, who are Finns. People may not like the Finnish economy’s poor finish in the last quarter of 2013, the rise of radical right wing parties or the sale of to . But, says Prado, “there is a positive emotional halo protecting the country.”

What about the US and why is it lagging far behind Finland, back in 22nd place? Several European countries that continue to contend with severe economic turmoil ranked above the US again this year including Ireland in 12th place, Italy in 16th place, France in 17th place, Spain in 18th place and Portugal in 19th place. For insight, Prado says you have to look at those additional 24 questions. The US does well when people are asked whether it has strong brands and companies. Only Japan ranks ahead (, ). But the US is close behind with corporations like , Google, Apple and Microsoft (which we reported on in April when Reputation Institute released its ranking of most reputable companies) .

The US is also considered the third-most technologically advanced and it ranks No. 8 as a contributor to global culture. France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom are at the top of the culture list, in part due to their culture heritage which obviously stretches back much further than the States’. The US scores poorly on efficient use of natural resources, safety, beauty, ethics and “friendly & welcoming people.” Prado doesn’t offer much insight into these categories so I’ll venture a guess: Perhaps those ranking the US’s beauty are thinking of the ride into Manhattan from the Newark airport, rather than of San Francisco, my gorgeous home town or of our magnificent national parks like Yosemite or the Grand Canyon. In the safety category, it can’t help that we’ve made worldwide news with horrific mass shootings like Newtown and our failure to restrict gun ownership.

In sum, a country’s reputation rankings are extremely important, says Prado, because all countries are competing for support from groups like tourists looking to spend leisure dollars, private businesses deciding where to invest, consumers buying foreign products and governments looking to place aid and investment funds.

See our slideshow above for the top 10 countries according to the Reputation Institute’s World’s Most Reputable Countries ranking and this link for the full report. Here's the list of the 55 countries: